Once upon a time political analysts would study parade review stand
photos of Soviet leaders to figure out who was in power and who had
been ousted. Now they just look to see who’s wearing the most expensive watch.

From totalitarian gerontocracy to a kleptocracy in nothing flat.

Keep a close eye on China.

The winner? A "GreubelForsey Double Tourbillon 30° that costs either $360,000 (for the
white gold edition) or $425,000 for the platinum edition."

Last December, the Bureau of Land Management tried to sell some scenic Utah public lands for oil and gas drilling, but the high bidder had no intention of paying, throwing the whole process into chaos. Some of the lands were in close proximity to Arches and Canyonlands national parks, Dinosaur National Monument and Nine Mile Canyon.

In February, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar canceled the sale, saying the auction was the result of "midnight actions" by the Bush administration.

This week, a new auction resulted in the sale of drilling rights for 55 parcels covering about 76,000 acres — about half of the land offered in the new sale.

When you hear about oil companies buying up oil and gas leases and wonder why they don't rush to actually develop them, consider this: The average price for the latest sale was $8.52 per acre.

One of the things I'm doing on this trip to Colorado is researching suicides in the Colorado National Monument. When I arrived in town yesterday, the main story was about a man who drove off a cliff in the Colorado National Monument.

His van caught a rock ledge 120 feet below the edge, which kept it from falling another 180 feet to the bottom of a canyon, which would've meant certain death.

He gives the good-and-evil view of things a bad name. Good and evil
are not like the Redskins and the Cowboys. Good and evil intermingle in
the same breath, let alone the same society. A moral analysis cannot be
a simplistic analysis.

“You may not agree with some of the tough
decisions I have made,” he said Thursday night. “But I hope you can
agree that I was willing to make the tough decisions.”

I just saw an infographic on how much of millionaires said they had lost of their net worth since last September. I got a couple year end reports for smaller retirement funds in the mail today, so what the hey. I've been sending them straight to recycling, but I decided to take a peek.

Eeek. Quick calculation — minus 42 percent on the year.

On that fun note, I surfed over to the work of this conceptual artist who has stacked 972 30-kg bags of sand on pallets. Each bag represents 30 daysworth of sand flowing through an hourglass. The sand would last for 81 years.

A Johns Hopkins Study of youth abstinence programs found no significant difference in sexual activity between matched participants and non-participants —
including the number of partners, incidence of sexually transmitted diseases or the age at which the teen lost his
or her virginity.

It also found that teens who had taken a virginity pledge were less likely to use condoms or other birth control.

Five years after taking an abstinence pledge, 82% of pledgers denied having ever made such a pledge.

According to ShowBoats International, a luxury yacht magazine, 916
yachts measuring 80 feet or longer — the traditional definition of a
superyacht — were on order or under construction as of last Sept. 1,
four times the number in 1997. The biggest gains were among the biggest
yachts: 47 yachts were 200 to 249 feet long, up 68 percent from a year
earlier, while 23 were 250 feet or longer, an increase of 28 percent.

“When I started in the early 1970s, a 60-foot boat was considered
pretty large,” Mr. Sharp said. “A 150-foot boat was queen of the show
in Monaco in 1982. In 2008, you wouldn’t be able to find that boat in
the marina.”

Lottery ticket sales in Minnesota fell 17 percent in January — to $34 million from $41 million a year ago.

Lottery officials said ticket sales do cycle with the economy, but also Powerball jackpots in January weren't has high as a year ago. Another contributing factor could be that most lottery ticket sales are made at gas station convenience stores. Higher gas prices might be making consumers feel less like dropping a few more bucks on the counter.

Now I'm waiting for the new talking point: Gas tax increase will lower state lottery revenues.

We hear about how Minnesota can't afford to pay more in gas taxes because, well, that would be more taxes and we can't afford 'em.

So we should re-prioritize spending if we want better roads and bridges. You know, get rid of those expensive bike paths and rural vo-tech centers, and if that isn't enough, kick some people off welfare, and if that still isn't enough we can borrow more.

After all, we defend freedom that way; why can't we build roads on credit?

Since 2000, we have been. But not enough to keep up with increasing inflation, more miles driven, and deferred maintenance on roads and bridges getting greater wear and tear.

As a result of all these factors, we're only about $14 billion short of where we would be if we maintained 1986 funding levels over the last 20 years.